Find out the ways to get your Mac Speed up yourself

Since computers are electronic cum digital machines, the performance of every machine relies on its embedded components and the way it is used. Similarly, a computer (whether Windows or Mac) comes across performance issues after running for a long period due to a slew of reasons.

Mac OS X is termed as an excellent computer operating system because of its pleasant GUI (Graphical User Interface), high-class hardware components, and unparalleled data processing speed. Despite these excellent features, Mac OS X users face performance issues and complain, for example, “My Mac is running at a Snail’s pace. How can I get it speed up?” However, delving deep into the problem introduces the causes of Mac crawling instead of running. These causes are none other than the system waste accumulated in different corners of the Mac machine. Therefore, in order to speed up Mac, you must clean up system’s waste accumulated in the following system areas:

Clean up Mac Hard Drive

Hard drive is the major source of memory on a computer; however, the performance of a computer is inversely proportional to the amount of data stored on its hard drive (i.e. more the amount of data stored on a hard drive, the poorer will be its performance). Today, computers are available with huge data storage capacity (i.e. 500GB, 1TB, and more) that facilitates storing large amount of data and installing so many applications concurrently. However, more the amount of free space available on a hard drive, the better is its performance.

Therefore, to let a computer perform significantly well, make sure every Mac volume has at least 10% of its capacity as free space.

Removing Login items to Get Accelerated Startup

Some applications create startup execution actions for themselves when you install them. You might have noticed that some applications start up automatically whenever your Mac boots to desktop. These self-executing applications are termed as Login or Startup items. Every time your Mac will boot, these startup actions will consume RAM for their execution and processor to process this execution. As a result, Mac’s startup time increases.

In order to speed up Mac machine, you can remove these Login items here: Apple menu > System Preferences > User & Groups. Select your user name at the left. Now, go to Login items tab. Click to check the checkbox in front of an item and click remove (-) to delete it.

Removing Temporary Internet Files

When you surf the Internet, a slew of temporary files download automatically on your Mac or by the web browser itself, which self-allocate processor and RAM for repeated executions. Because of which, System’s resources remain busy unnecessarily. 

Remove all such temporary files, cookies, browser’s history, stored username and passwords, etc. within Safari browser. On Safari browser go to Safari menu and choose Reset Safari. A message box will appear to notify you what is going to be deleted and you need to click Erase button over there.

Clean up iChat log files

Mac OS X has a built-in chat application, i.e. iChat that stores all your chat logs in an iChat named folder in Documents folder on your Mac. For this, you need to launch iChat, and then follow Preferences > Messages > Save Chat Transcripts To. Choose a folder to save all your chat logs. By storing all your chat messages in text format, iChat may help you remind your conversations. However, imagine the size of iChat folder if you had exchanged media files (i.e. images and more).

You can delete these iChat logs in order to improve iChat speed and save disk space.

Clean up your Mac without bothering yourself

Since Mac Computers are sophisticated in nature, every time you need to use any of its tools, make sure you are well aware of their features and functionality. During the input and output operations, Mac’s performance falls gradually, due to which this so-called excellent computer (i.e. Mac) falls sick and requires cleanup.

When it comes to cleaning the Mac, what are the different areas on Mac that you consider as dirty and want to clean them up? Do you clean Mac’s hard drive, minimize number of installed apps, remove email logs, and other temporary files? If not, you should be cleaning up all these spots on your Mac frequently, in order to make it run smoothly. Consider the following steps to clean drive and speed up Mac:

 

Mac Hard Drive

Hard drive is one of the major areas under suspect for affecting Mac’s performance, as every single file (i.e. System files and user data) is stored on it. The nature and amount of data stored on the hard drive collectively affect the performance of the computer. Therefore, make sure the memory occupied by data is less than 90 percent of the capacity of the hard drive. For example, if capacity of a Mac volume is 100GB, then data stored on it should not be more than 90GB.

 

Installed Apps

The boot volume on Mac is the primary volume, which contains operating system’s files along with the applications you install on it (i.e. the apps you install on your Mac consume space from the boot volume). System files consume definite amount of space while rest of the memory is utilized for installing apps. Therefore, more the number of installed apps, lesser will be the free space. Make sure you install an app only when it is required, and remove it when you are no longer going to use it.

 

Email Auto-downloads

Apple’s email facilitates quick view of the email attachment (if any). When you receive an email including a media file as an attachment, you can have a quick look at it by double-clicking it within the email. As you open its preview, it automatically downloads at a default location, i.e. youruserfolder/Library/Mail Downloads. Therefore, you must have a downloaded copy of all previewed media files you received via email. Go to this directory location and empty this folder, since every time you access those emails, these downloaded files start executing automatically.

 

Browser Reset

Apple computers have inbuilt Safari web browser that by default stores logs of all Internet activities, such as browsing history, cookies, username and password, cache, form text, and download history. All such information is stored in temporary files that reside on the hard drive. Every time you launch Safari browser, these log files become active and start executing automatically. Therefore, launch Safari, go to Safari menu, and click Reset Safari. Click the checkboxes in front of the items you want to reset, and then click Reset button.

Besides the spots on Mac you can clean up manually, several unreachable areas also need cleanup. In order to clean such areas, you need to use cleanup Mac software.